Introduction

This essay sets to provide a report that critically demonstrates how the creation of identification brand using the low budget route brand development strategy can help PoundCity increase its profit and customers through offering them a wide range of choices over its current range of brands. The paper will also produce a picture board of the source and identification brand.

Part 1: Write a Report Proposing and Justifying the New Identification Brand

Identification of Well-Known Product of Chocolate Bars in the UK

The most effective and well-known brand of chocolate bars that PoundCity should consider imitating as its copycat or identification brand is the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate which is offered by the Cadbury Company that has over the years grew to become a leader in the existing chocolate confectionery market across the globe (Bradley, 2011, pp.38). The Cadbury Company has over the years managed to create an outstanding brand image that has boosted its market share through offering products such as candy, gum, a range of beverages and functional health foods and chocolates such as Dairy Milk Chocolate bars and Cadbury Fruit and Nut to its customers (Bradley, 2011, pp.38).

Evaluation of Market Performance

The Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate is one of the well-performing brands in the market amongst all its existing brands in Cadbury’s product portfolio (Mahale, 2010, pp.48). Currently, the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate is being sold in more than 60 countries in which Cadbury Company is operating including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Turkey where the exists growing markets for its products (Sondhi and Chawla, 2018, pp.66).

The Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate as one of the brands of the Cadbury Company has managed to generate more profit for the source brand or the firm through increasing the range of its target customers (Mahale, 2010, pp.49). Previously, the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate was only targeting children who were considered to have a high preference for sweet products such as this brand (Mythily, 2015, pp.1204). However, the Cadbury Company has started to target other customers such as the youths and adults by selling high-quality Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate, unlike its competitors who only focus children thus making the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate have the upper hand in the chocolate market (Mythily, 2015, pp.1206).

Nature and Strengths of the Source Brand

Cadbury Company which is the source brand of the Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate bars sells a wide range of confectionery across the globe thus making it have a strong market position that enables it to expand in the international market (Keller, Parameswaran and Jacob, 2011, pp.36). Cadbury Company sells most of its products under its brand name as it is the case for some of its brands such as Cadbury Fruit and Nut chocolate bars and Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate. It also sells some of its other products using a range of other names such as the Green and Black’s chocolate (Keller, Parameswaran and Jacob, 2011, pp.38). The use of extensive product portfolio has over the years given Cadbury Company a competitive advantage over its rivals in the global market by making sure that its wide range of product lines are able to generate colossal capital and at the same time offer its customers with a wide range of products which they can choose from while shopping (Ajibola and Njogo, 2012, pp.8).

Cadbury Company has also managed to enhance its brand image in the local and international environment by offering beverages such as Cadbury drinking chocolate, Bournvita and Cadbury Bournville Cocoa (Wani, 2013, pp.109). Although the confectionery market has in the past six decades changed with most of the people categorizing chocolate products as luxury thus reserving them for special occasions such as birthdays whereby they are presented as presents, Cadbury has managed to maintain its operations across the globe by commanding about 69% of the total confectionery market in the world (Oghojafor, George and Owoyemi, 2012, pp.64). The company has used a market penetration strategy to exploit more untapped markets in the international environment thus making it successfully managed to increase its customer base and market share (Wani, 2013, pp.113). Through behavioural segmentation, Cadbury Company has over the years been targeting its clients based on market trends, events and occasions such as Valentine season, Diwali and any other festive season (Paluchová, 2017, pp.485). Moreover, Cadbury Company has been positioning its brands especially the chocolates as premium chocolates that are increasingly aligned to the happiness of the customers (Sondhi and Chawla, 2018, pp.52).

Brand Image Analysis of the Source Brand

Moreover, Cadbury Company is currently operating in a market which can be considered to have Monopolistic Competition whereby it only faces rivalry from a few firms notably Nestle and Hershey (Bharucha, 2016, pp.612). Presence of such an environment has given this brand source a competitive advantage in the market and allowed it to flexibly use its pricing policy without the influence of the competitors and change it to suit the existing market trends whenever the need arises (Bharucha, 2016, pp.615). One of the primary pricing strategies that Cadbury Company has been using and which has enabled it creates an excellent brand image and increase its customer base is positioning pricing (Sondhi and Chawla, 2018, pp.53). Through this pricing policy, Cadbury Company set the prices of its products particularly the chocolate brands in such a way that they reflect the current views of the customers in the markets thus ensuring that they are relatively affordable to the clients at any time (Sondhi and Chawla, 2018, pp.57).

Creation and Justification of an Identification Brand that will become an Exclusive Brand Available Only in PoundCity

The identification brand to be created is Fruit and Nut Chocolate Bar that will increasingly imitate the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate brand that is offered by Cadbury Company. The product development department of PoundCity will need to use the Exclusive Branding Strategy in the effort of creating identification brand that it intends to provide (Harwood, 2013, pp.43). The main reason for using this marketing strategy is that it has proven to be very applicable in diverse markets such as the United Kingdom where companies such as Aldi which is a German-based privately-owned company that has managed to dominate the grocery market in the United Kingdom thus effectively competition against giant grocery companies in the country such as Tesco, Wal-Mart and ASDA (Waterlander, van Kouwen and HM Steenhuis, 2014, pp.1524).

Given the nature of the brand that PoundCity Company wants to offer to its customers in the efforts of increasing their choice of brands they can get from this company, the exclusive branding strategy proves to be a significant pillar and booster towards this success (Waterlander, van Kouwen and HM Steenhuis, 2014, pp.1526). Undertaking comprehensive market research will enable PoundCity to discover the various needs of the customers thus design its proposed Fruit and Nut Chocolate bar in such a manner that it will be the only product that has managed to meet these needs (Harwood, 2013, pp.46). The application of the exclusive branding strategy in PoundCity will result in the creation of a unique brand that will give a competitive advantage over those offered by its rivals.

The exclusive brand strategy will also provide PoundCity which reliable guidelines on how it will set exceptional standards for the new brand of chocolate bars (Zalewska, 2014, pp.2). Some of the primary standards that PoundCity will implement for this new brand include eschewing the conventions of this company and adhering to the PoundCity’s design philosophies thus resulting to an invention of a brand of chocolate bars that is highly stylized and engineered (Harwood, 2013, pp.48). Such uniqueness in this brand will make it become a prime attractor for the existing customers especially those clients that may increasingly prefer to set themselves apart from the others who are using the similar brands that are offered in the ever competitive market (Zalewska, 2014, pp.2).

Moreover, PoundCity can take advantage of the strong brand image and reputation of the Cadbury Company through brand identification of Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate which is one of the best-selling brands of Cadbury Company (Wells, 2017, pp.137). There are several features of the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate that PoundCity can imitate thus enable it to take advantage of the strong reputation and brand equity of this product and free ride on this brand’s equity in the market (Wells, 2017, pp.138). The most outstanding and unique features of the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate that PoundCity can imitate in its proposed brand include maintaining high-quality, reasonably pricing its brand and updating its packaging using newly designed wrappers that have different size fonts but which still retain the purple colour (Wells, 2017, pp.139). These are main features that have enabled Cadbury Company to increase its customer base and remain incredibly popular across the globe unlike most of its competitors.

Therefore, PoundCity should ensure that the proposed Fruits and Nuts Chocolate bars are processed with excellent ingredients that will ensure that they remain of high-quality and attractive similarly to the Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars that are offered by Cadbury Company (Saka, 2011, pp.33). Secondly, the use of positioning pricing strategy similar to that used by Cadbury Company while selling its Dairy Milk Chocolate bars can aid PoundCity in ensuring that this new brand is readily acceptable and affordable to all the target clients who fall under high, medium and lower social classes (Saka, 2011, pp.35). As emphasised by the Consumer Theory, customers tend to exhibit a high degree of preference to those products that are high quality and still sold at affordable prices thus the higher the cost of the products and services sold, the lower and the demand and vice versa (Wadman, 2016, pp.41).

The other feature that PoundCity should maintain as part of brand identification strategy is updating the font size and shapes of the wrappers used during the packaging process and ensure that they designed in such a way that they still maintain the purple colour (Saka, 2011, pp.37). This colour is what significantly identifies the products of Cadbury Company from the substitute products sold by the rivals thus maintaining or imitating this feature will give the Fruits and Nuts Chocolate bars that PoundCity is planning to offer an upper hand over the existing ones in the market.

Such uniqueness will also give this identification brand a strong brand image and equity in the market. The below Brand Equity Model can help illustrate how the creation of unique products is a substantial factor in enhancing the success of a brand in the market.

Figure 1: Brand Equity Model

Source: (Christodoulides and De Chernatony, 2010, pp.44)

As indicated in the above model, some of the critical elements of brand equity include brand identity, image and awareness which primarily relates to the appearance and features that make a brand different from the others in the market (Christodoulides and De Chernatony, 2010, pp.45). PoundCity can achieve this through using wrappers which have purple colour thus enabling it free ride on the current brand equity of the Dairy Milk Chocolate Bars offered by the Cadbury Company among other factors. Other elements of the Brand Equity Model that PoundCity should focus on enhancing include brand perception, loyalty and association which can be achieved through using the positioning pricing strategy to sell high-quality Fruits and Nuts Chocolate bars (Christodoulides and De Chernatony, 2010, pp.46). The continued use of these marketing strategies will enable PoundCity to create a strong brand through effectively shaping how its target customers who by a great extent are similar to those that Cadbury Company targets thin and feel about this copycat brand. Moreover, these strategies will enable PoundCity to successfully transfer the brand image of the Dairy Milk Chocolate Bars to its new identification brand at minimal costs.

However, the creation of this identification brand in PoundCity will only be possible and easily realizable through the use of low budget route to brand development given the fact that this company is already facing financial challenges due to its reduction in the total amount of profits that it has generated from its operations in the last two years (Zahorsky, 2012, pp.37). Given the financial problems that PoundCity is currently facing, there are several low-budget market strategies that it can employ in the effort of developing the proposed brand.

For instance, maintaining high-quality standards can help this company avoid expensive marketing or promotion methods such as the use of television advertisements since clients will always refer the brand to their peers whenever they are satisfied with it (French, 2010, pp.249). Moreover, content marketing using its various social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook can assist PoundCity to develop and market this new brand without incurring different costs (French, 2010, pp.253).  These strategies are likely to play an essential role in assisting PoundCity successfully develop the new identification brand.

Part 2: Produce an A3-Sized Picture Board (Electronically in Word) of the Source and the Identification Brand

Figure 2: Brand Source and Identification Brand

Source:

The above picture board represents the brand source which in this case is the Cadbury Company and the brand identification whereby the Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar becomes the primary brand that PoundCity aims at using to develop a copycat brand through the help of the low budget route to brand development. As indicated by the above picture board, Cadbury Company offers a wide range of products which include chocolate bars, beverages, biscuits, candies, gums and chocolate bags and boxes (Aidoo et al., 2012, pp.225). These products form part of its extensive product mix or portfolio which gives it a competitive advantage over its rivals (Aidoo et al., 2012, pp.227). In the chocolate bars product line, PoundCity should focus on the Dairy Milk Chocolate bars as its selected brand for imitation since it is one of the well-performing brands in the market and popularly known worldwide.